By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
No, I’m not writing today about liberated vaginas and the purity of a zipless fuck: it’s already been done by Erica Jong, taking an early stab at breaking through the social coding, ultimately the wall of guilt, that keeps us in our assigned roles. In sex, as in everything else, we’re only as authentic as we’ve allowed ourselves to be. Today we’ll examine the wall itself because, seems to me, we could not be tossed and twisted like pliant pizza dough whenever something scary comes along if the ingredients weren’t already within us. On the face of it, the gluten that makes us so easily stretched and molded seems to be a kind of sociopolitical herd consciousness, turned at the snap of a twig or the whim of a leader. Those of us disinclined to take such a leap get carried along by the majority, and that sums up my experience of the early years of our new century.
As always, it’s news of the day and the politics that shape it that bring all this to mind, absurd illustrations of our current psychic state. It’s taken so tragic a thing as the heartbreaking earthquake in Haiti to get the politicos off a toxic replay of national security issues, all this on the heels of the Christmas bombing event that put Janet Napolitano’s job as Homeland Security Secretary in jeopardy. Hysteria is sooooo unattractive. I confess to having very little patience with this kind of mob-mentality and group-think, and took a certain perverse delight in this quote from an article by David Rothkopf: “The Republican Party has the collective cool on these matters of Prissy helping to birth Melanie’s baby in Gone With the Wind.” While I’m coming clean, I should also mention my resolution to immediately turn the channel on any program featuring Liz Cheney. She will be added to my Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck Rule: “Do not lie down with dogs lest ye get fleas.” Or Neo-con kennel cough, whatever.
As regards the herd consciousness of the opposition party, and in some instances our own, facts don’t seem to get us very far in the national argument, intelligence doesn’t count for much, and emotion is the name of the game. As illustrated in the book What’s The Matter With Kansas?, when we’re fed on a consistent diet of make-believe, we don’t connect with our own best interests even when they’re staring us in the face. Even more, as regards this whole issue of random terror, we’re easily spooked. Sometimes I think our American “can do-ism” and confidence in our ability to manage our own lives play against us when Chicken Little starts to squawk. 300 million of us rushing out with shotguns pointed at the sky at the first sign of danger is not only counterproductive, it’s stupid. And stupidity seems the word I choose most often when I think of the dialog concerning the state of our union.